Back form Costa Rica

                                                           BACK FROM COSTA RICA                    12/31/2010………8pm

We are now back in our beloved temporary home of Copan Ruinas. We arrived last night, Dec.30^th and awoke this morning to one of the typical power outages. We journeyed to the market today for our bi-weekly purchase of fruits, veggies and other supplies. For a special treat today,we are listening to a barrage of fireworks sounds. Occasionally we endure what sounds like a bomb going off and we wait for the windows to blow in. Before we left I saw a young boy buying a “firecracker” that was 3” in diameter and about 14” long. Tonight at 10pm we will be attending a new year fiesta at our landlords friends place where we can practice our Spanish. Aye, aye, aye. As for this moment and many more moments to come we are being serenaded by the hours long church service next door, which will undoubtedly continue into the new year.

Our trip to Costa Rica was great. We stayed with our friends Jose, Bernadette, Sophia, and Isabel Solano. We arrived last Wednesday at 8am to much cooler weather than we expected. The mountains were cloud covered the entire time we were there but the weather was nice anyway. When we arrived we wondered if we made our stay too long, 8 days, because you know what they say about overstaying your welcome, fish and friends-you don’t keep them for more than two days.

Bernadette had a lot of work to do as she works from home writing math textbooks, so it was up to Jose to entertain us for the most part during the day. On Thursday, Jose, Amy, and I went to town where we had breakfast at a locals place. It was small, kind of rough, as in down to earth, and great. We ordered the “platos tipicos” with rice and beans, eggs, corn tortillas and cheese. Yum. A heaping plate for about three dollars, then off to run some errands. “Would you take your tour group here?” Amy wondered. “Oh no,” replied Jose, “This is only for very special people.” (We got to know the Solanos better by taking one of Jose’s guided trips to Guatemala and Belize a few years ago. Jose caters to upper middle class tastes, meaning he sticks to restaurants serving $10 meals instead of $2-3 meals. Still a bargain for most US tourists, but Jose knows that we prefer the hole-in-the-wall places with all of the local flavor.) After a trip to the bank and the inevitable lines at the bank and a shopping adventure at the local farmer’s market, we went back to the Solano’s place for a swim and a walk through the gardens. They live in some condos that are adjacent to and owned by a hotel so they have access to the hotel gardens. The gardens are host to a variety of tropical flora such as varieties of banana and lemon trees, coffee plants, numerous flowers, and other trees such as the beautiful Ceiba and Guanacaste,Costa Rica’s national tree and a symbol of freedom. The gardens are very beautiful. In the morning and evening, we would occasionally walk through the gardens in hope of spotting some of the tropical birds. While Amy was swimming I, earning my stripes as a  master bird-spotter, saw the Blue Crowned Mot Mot tucked away in the trees surrounding the pool area. A very cool bird. We also saw blue grey tanningers, crimson fronted amazon parrots and other birds. Yellow,orange,brown. You name it. I even saw the little pygmie owl. Very cool and cute. Jose quickly learned that if you want to spot wildlife, it’s a good thing to have Alex Rangel along. Amy snuck this line when I wasn't looking. She said I had to leave it.

Each morning we would awake, have our coffee, eat a bit , then Jose would have some options for us to choose from. “Where would you like to go today?” he’d query, wanting to explore local possibilities for an upcoming tour group he’s offering in Spring 2011. One day, we all piled into the car and made the trip up the mountain to La Paz Bird and Butterfly Sanctuary. Getting from one place to another in Costa Rica is quite a challenge. Maps aren’t always the ticket either. There isn’t a straight road in the whole country,it seems, so if you want to go somewhere that is 10 miles away as the crow flies, you have to travel 20 miles to get there and they have a limited amount of signs.It was always an adventure to get from one place to another. We had to get lost at least once or twice a trip or end up driving in circles, and with the traffic, driving on the streets is more like driving on a race track. So, we are on our way to the sanctuary. We get up the mountain to find the road pot-holed and muddy from construction to repair it after it was damaged by an earthquake a couple of years ago. It was slow going for a while but we made it only to encounter rain. Even though Jose negotiated a reduced rate of $20 per person, we opted not to get wet and started back down the road to find lunch.

We had fun on our adventures each day. We went to a zoo which is in a very hard to find, but nice location in San Jose. Unfortunately, Jose had been there before and said not much had improved from the restless animals in cages from 20 years earlier. At the bird park and sanctuary outside of Alajuela, I looked up into the canopy of a tree and spotted the famed Jesu Cristo,or Jesus Christ lizard, so named for its ability to run across the top of water. Its true name is the Common Basalisk, meaning Small King. We also traveled to some nice towns. One town in particular Jose, Amy, and I walked by a local tavern where, inside, there were a couple of ex-pats among the locals. Jose suggested we go in for a beer to experience the local flare. We promptly encountered a very nice old tico (local man) sitting at the bar drinking shots. He wanted us to sit with him but we politely declined as he was already sloshed and it was only noon. For Christmas Day, we bought a pork leg (pierna de cerdo) and Jose made Pernil. He punched holes in the roast and stuffed the holes with garlic, capers (a Christmas gift from Bernadette to Jose) and green olives with pimientos, then baked the whole concoction at 300 degrees while we all left the apartment for our trip to the zoo. Amy tried a new recipe from Bernadette’s Costa Rican cookbook with sliced plantain, apples and a type of sweet potato that is not really sweat, butter honey. Rice and beans and the ever present pastries from the panadoria. Oh, wine. (We think Bernadette and Jose may be under the false impression that we are drinkers as we used the excuse of vacation to have wine, beer, and/or rum and cokes every evening.)

On Sunday, the day after Christmas we went to a Pre-Columbian museum in downtown San Jose that houses stone, clay, and a lot of gold artifacts from the Mayan civilization. The gold artifacts are mostly small pendants and sculptures. When we arrived downtown we heard that there was going to be parade with horses. After we finished at the museum, we were going to head home. While we were waiting for our group to converge I walked to the main street to check out the parade. The street had four lanes with horses and riders galore. I walked back to tell everyone and we found out that it is an annual event that goes on all afternoon. There were thousands of spectators and thousands of horse riders, men, women, and sometimes children. It was a huge party – an excuse to drink, as Jose put it. Riders just kept coming and people were yelling and cheering. We stayed for about 45 minutes feeling we had the good fortune to happen upon this event. When we got home, Jose looked the parade up online, The Oracle, as we dubbed it, to find that it is the largest of its kind and happens each year on the day after Christmas.

Well, Wednesday came much faster than we expected. It seemed as if we had just arrived and it was time to leave. We didn’t over stay our welcome after all. It seems you can keep friends for more than two days, but fish, nah I wouldn’t recommend it.

Well, it is now Jan.1^st am. Our stroll to the new year fiesta we were invited to last night was another adventure.